


The Trial of Phryne

by barbaricyawp



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Omega Bucky Barnes, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-04-23 21:09:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbaricyawp/pseuds/barbaricyawp
Summary: Steve should have known better when he agreed to be a testing subject for the Science and Health Institute of Elevating Lower Designations, or SHIELD. But when he first entered SHIELD’s doors, he was a sickly beta. A sickly beta who’d always known he was an alpha.And SHIELD promised that, should the procedure go as planned, Steve would be a healthy alpha. Better than healthy. Better than alpha.Yes, but the experiments didn’t go as planned, did they?“So, a brothel,” Steve says. “SHIELD is sending me to a brothel for my first rut.”--Steve is a new alpha about to go into rut. He seeks the services of an omega, Bucky.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been accumulating digital dust in my WIP file, and it seemed like a shame to waste nearly 4k of smut.

 

* * *

_Alexander destroyed this wall, but Phryne the courtesan restored it._

* * *

 

“I understand your frustration with the situation, Mr. Rogers.  _I’m_ frustrated with the situation.”

Steve hums, a neutral sound in the back of his throat. A lifetime of working with doctors has taught him to choke down how he feels about his own body while receiving a diagnosis. Doctors don't dole out any helpful kind of empathy, and Steve can't stand the usual substitute for empathy: pity.

“Believe me, we are as surprised by your body’s reaction to this procedure as you are.” Dr. Erskine leans forward onto his elbows, rubbing his temples. He looks like a man who is running out of funding.

Steve should have known better when he agreed to be a testing subject for the Science and Health Institute of Elevating Lower Designations, or SHIELD. But when he first entered SHIELD’s doors, he was a sickly beta. A sickly beta who’d always known he was an alpha.

And SHIELD promised that, should the procedure go as planned, Steve would be a healthy alpha. Better than healthy. Better than alpha.

Yes, but the experiments didn’t go as planned, did they?

“Moving forward, we need to be practical,” Erskine says, flipping through his massive stack of folders.

SHIELD sent over a Russian novel’s worth of resources after Steve’s procedure went awry. At least they’re thorough.

“SHIELD has a secondary facility to help you through your first rut. Well, and any subsequent ruts, should you need. It’s called…” he trails off, brow furrowed as he tries to sort through to the pertinent information. “Ah, the Center for Heats Yielded—”

“So, a brothel,” Steve interrupts, his shock shoved up his esophagus without warning. Heat is pooling at the base of his neck, prickling down his spine like hot wax. He can smell himself, the scent of his rut coming on. Erskine must be suffocating in the scent. “SHIELD is sending me to a brothel for my first rut.”

“Not quite. It’s a medical facility. And they prefer to call them Heat and Rut Centers now, but…” Erskine catches Steve’s expression and redirects. “But yes. Essentially a brothel.”

Erskine then fixes Steve with a quintessentially German expression. One that conveys he knows Steve is displeased, but that’s life, isn’t it?

“Unless you have a better plan for your rut. In which case…” Erskine sniffs the air, a distinctly doctoral gesture. “You have maybe three hours before the rut sets in.”

Ruts are usually experienced with a trusted mate or friend. Though alphas have largely evolved past the mindless, savage fucking of the middle ages, most alphas find it painful to abstain from sex altogether. Very painful. For Steve, with his botched procedure, a rut alone would be agony. All his doctors, including Erskine, agree.

And so that’s the story of how Steve Grant Rogers went to a brothel for his first rut.

 

\---

 

For what it’s worth, the Center for Heats and So On isn’t what Steve expected. He imagined an 18th century brothel, darkly lit with velvet curtains and chaise lounges. A madame carrying a book with names and pictures. That’s not what he gets.

Instead, the center's atmosphere is more like that of a spa blended with a health clinic. Steve passes through automated glass doors into a welcome center resembling a hospital lobby. The bright interior and clean lighting is an immediate shock to Steve’s compromised system.

He stands in the middle of the lobby, dazed by the absence of ambient color and smell, overwhelmed by his own rutting scent, until the receptionist clears his throat.

“Ya lost there, alpha?”

Steve’s attention shifts molasses-slow to the bearded man sitting behind the desk. He’s on suppressants, but Steve’s elevated sense of smell can just barely make out the charming, abiding scent of a beta. Steve is instantly soothed by it, and he drifts towards the desk in a haze. The rush of hormones induced by his oncoming rut is making him hazy and stupid, hurling him into unfamiliar territory. He’s ready for some guidance, dying for it. 

“My name is Steve—” His voice comes out gravelly and low. He clears his throat. “My name is Steve Rogers. Dr. Erskine sent me for—”

“First rut, huh?” The beta receptionist lifts his eyebrows, no, _waggles_ them and Steve bristles at the unprofessionalism. The beta clicks his tongue, smelling Steve’s displeasure. “Don’t be touchy. We get a lot of you super alphas in here.”

A _lot_ of them?

“Come along,” the beta urges. “I’ll show you where the omegas are.”

The beta stands and plucks up a large key ring completely stacked with keys of a uniform size and color. He leads Steve down towards a door marked with a simple swirl: the universal sign for omegas. 

“Omegas?” Steve prompts, emphasizing the plural. Why would he need multiple omegas at once? How intense will this rut be? 

The beta nods. “Well, you gotta take your pick,” he says and unlocks the door.

Oh, well. Steve isn’t particular. Anyone would be nice right now.

The door leads to a hall of more doors, roughly a dozen. Each numbered, locked, and scent-sealed. The beta leads Steve to the first door and unlatches a narrow, sliding grate similar to that of a confessional or the password slot for a speakeasy. The scent of an omega in heat wafts out.

“Sorry,” the beta says, “We’ve only got eight omegas able to accommodate your super rut, Super Alpha. Hopefully, you’ll find at least one scent compatible. How about this one?”

Self-conscious, but with no other options, Steve stoops down to scent the omega through the grate. He thought he wouldn’t be picky—all omegas are beautiful omegas, all scents good scents—but he’s hypersensitive from the rut and the spicy omega scent prickles his nose and roils his stomach. Steve jerks back, sneezing, and the beta slides the grate shut with a laugh.

“Moving right along, then,” the beta declares. His voice is loud enough that Steve flinches; he’s worried that the rejected omega will hear and be offended.

He scents several of the other omegas with the same results. By door seven, he’s begun to despair—maybe he’s fated to let this rut run its course alone; Steve can tough it out—when he’s finally introduced to the best scent he’s ever encountered in his _life._

Most of the omegas in this hall have traditionally appealing scents, conforming to societal expectations for omegas: floral, sweet, and demure. But this omega, omega number seven, their scent is muskier. A deep woodsy fragrance as robust as a campfire and with the underlying vanilla fragrance of pine tree bark.

Unlike the others, this omega isn’t fully in heat yet. The fragrance isn’t as strong. And as Steve tucks his nose against the grate to inhale more deeply, he wonders how good that scent will be once the omega’s heat advances.

“You’re drooling, Rogers,” the beta remarks. He’s already flipping through the key ring to find the one marked #7. “Is this the guy?”

Steve nods, neck hot. “The best guy.”

 

\---

 

Inside the room, there’s not much to take in; it’s the same clinical white of the lobby with only a few personal details. A framed poster of the NYC skyline hangs above the well. Light, gauzy curtains obscure the window, but not the natural light.

Steve’s eyes glance over the décor, but gravitate instantly to the omega who sits cross-legged on the bed, reading a paperback in one hand and holding in the other what smells like black coffee with sugar. Lots of sugar.

When Steve enters, the omega looks up. The corners of his plush mouth turn up like a cupid’s bow, a knowing smile. He sets the book and coffee aside and pats the mattress in front of him.

“C’mere, stud,” he says in a faded Brooklyn accent. “Let me get a look at you.”

Steve approaches with hesitance. His rut hasn’t yet begun, but he’s heard horror stories of alphas out of control, driven to violence by the all-consuming scent of a compatible omega. Omega rights activists insist that this is a sexist myth about the designations, propagated by those who seek to send omega civil rights back to the 50s. Alphas aren't instinctually violent. But Steve is terrified of being a bad alpha all the same.

As mishandled as Steve's procedure was, he’s been given a chance to be his authentic self. Steve doesn’t want to abuse that privilege.

So, he sits gingerly on the very edge of the bed, knees over the side and torso twisted so he can extend a hand for the omega to shake. 

“Steve Rogers,” he introduces himself. “I’m, uh, new at this.”

“I’d say.” The omega gives a wry smirk at Steve’s extended hand. He plucks it up as if to shake, but instead turns Steve’s hand over and lifts his wrist to his nose to inhale deeply. He hums softly at the scent, aroused pheromones pouring from his body. “Mm. My name is Bucky.”

“You smell amazing, Bucky,” Steve confesses without meaning to. When he opens his mouth, it fills with Bucky’s scent. Saliva pools on Steve’s tongue.

“Right back atcha,” Bucky says, but now he’s slurring. Not quite in heat yet, but Steve is flattered to know he’s driving Bucky closer.

He’s never had an effect like this on an omega before. Sometimes, interested alphas would come sniffing around Steve, misjudging him as demure due to his size, but omegas and betas rarely ever gave Steve the time of day. Now, he’s got an omega clinging to the scent gland in his wrist, calling him “stud” and telling him he smells good. It affirms something in him, something that always knew Steve's potential.

Not to mention that Bucky is one of the most stunning omegas Steve has ever met.

To think twelve hours ago, Steve was shivering on an operating table, bony knees knocking together and asthma exacerbating his anxiety. What would Bucky think of that Steve Rogers? Would he still be rubbing his nose against his pulse?

When Bucky has his fill of Steve’s scent, he leans back and sighs. “So, tell me. What do you like to do during a rut?” 

Steve rubs the back of his neck, an embarrassed grin pulls his face tight. “When I said I was new…I meant new to all of this. I’ve never had a rut before.” 

Steve glances back up to Bucky just in time to see the look of shock flick over his handsome face. The same instant it’s there, the expression is gone again. At least Bucky is more professional than the beta receptionist in this regard.

“I see,” Bucky says. And Steve is relieved that he doesn’t ask why his client, a 30 year old alpha, hasn’t had a rut yet. Instead, he shifts onto his knees. “Have you had sex with an omega before?”

He kissed an omega, once, in school. But that was a long time ago and never led to anything more. Steve never even spoke to that omega again, never knew their name.

Steve shakes his head. “Just betas.”

Bucky whistles through his teeth and rubs his palms together. “Then, I gotta say, Steve, I’m excited.” 

The way Bucky says this—all bright eyes, smelling so fresh and eager—Steve believes he’s genuinely excited and not patronizing him. “Why?”

“Because you’re gonna love it.” Bucky takes one of Steve’s wrists and pulls him onto the bed. He’s shockingly strong for an omega, and Steve is beginning to think he needs to check his assumptions at the door. “I don’t mean to brag, well maybe I do just a little, but I am very, _very_ good at what I do.”

Bucky lies back on the bed, pulling Steve over himself. He wraps his legs around Steve’s waist, lifting his hips off the bed.

“You ready?”

Steve just swallows thickly.

 

\---

 

If Steve expected to dive straight into the action, he’s sorely mistaken. Bucky is slow, patient, and attentive to foreplay. It occurs to Steve that he never confirmed how long he had with Bucky, but considering he was advised to bring an overnight bag, he assumes they have some time.

And he is more than happy to let Bucky take his time. Especially as he skims his fingers across Steve’s jaw, down the column of his throat, over his chest. Especially when he gives a low, appreciative hum that coaxes out more of those delicious pheromones.

Steve is losing chunks of his conscious brain. He’ll begin to construct a logical thought, but it unravels the moment Bucky’s breath skims across his cheek, or a shift of his legs gusts his scent through the room.

He’s coming unglued.

But it doesn’t seem like Bucky is faring any better. His heat scent thickens to a sweet syrup. When he finally disentangles himself from Steve to strip out of his clothes, his smell blooms and permeates the entire room. Between his thighs, there’s a faint glimmer of slick. 

Steve’s mouth waters. He wants to ask if he can eat him out, but doesn’t. Too shy to give directions, though he knows Bucky would do what he asked of him. Anything he asked of him.

As if reading his mind, Bucky leans back and gasps, “Tell me what you want.” He’s rubbing his thighs together, gripping the sheets tight in his white knuckles. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

“Maybe I want you to do what you want to do,” Steve cops out. His tongue feels thick and stupid in his mouth. He can only hope that sentence comes out right.

Bucky’s face goes fond and sweet, losing some of that devilishness he began with. He wraps his naked thighs around Steve’s clothed hips. Before Steve can even exhale, he flips them over, throwing Steve onto his back using just his thighs.

“You want me to show you the ropes, alpha?” he says, leaning low to breathe directly into Steve’s ear. A low tenor that rumbles Steve's ear drum. “You want me to ride you? Do you want to buck and grind and let me just ride it all out? Take it however you give it?”

Steve blinks. That’s about all he can do. There’s a reason alphas are depicted as stupid during a rut.

Bucky presses his hips down against Steve’s, but pauses when he doesn’t react. “Gonna need a verbal ‘Yes’ on that one, big guy.”

He beams down at Steve, hair falling in long strands from its bun on the top of his head. He’s gorgeous. Too gorgeous. Steve turns his head to the side, breathes in deep. Then his hands lift to grip Bucky’s hips and pull him back down.

Face hot, Steve presses his nose into Bucky’s neck. He inhales deeply, seeking out that vanilla undertone again.

“I want that,” he murmurs, and he’s shocked by how husky he sounds. By the low growl of his own voice. “I want you,” he says, just to hear it again.

“I hear you.” Bucky reaches down between them and unzips Steve’s fly. He rubs his knuckles into Steve’s pubic hair, not yet taking his cock into his hand yet. “You still with me?”

“Uh huh,” Steve says. His tongue has now swelled past the point of articulation.

Bucky seems charmed by this. He smiles and circles his thumb around his belly button. The gesture is surprisingly intimate and playful, for what they are to each other. Only a step up from strangers.

When Bucky does finally draw Steve out of his pants, Bucky’s heat unfurls in full. Steve can smell it on him. His aroused scent rolls of him in waves, and Steve grips his hips tighter.

“Shit,” Bucky says. “Wish I’d saved calling you ‘big boy’ for this moment.”

“Not that big,” Steve slurs. He’s already trying to pull Bucky closer. Can’t remember why he ever felt so shy when Bucky smells like that. _Looks_ like that _._ Flushed and sweet and good enough to eat.

“Alright, alright,” Bucky laughs, cottoning on. He shifts over him and pushes the head of Steve’s cock up against his entrance.

But the moment he does, Steve’s logical brain slams back into his skull. “Wait,” he says, gripping Bucky’s wrist. Planned Parenthood pamphlets swim in his peripheries. “We didn’t…lube? Condom?”

Bucky laughs. He presses a palm to the center of Steve’s chest. “Super alpha,” he says. He presses a hand to his own chest. “Super omega. I’ll be fine.”

Steve fixes him with a look.

“You trust me?”

Steve holds his palm out flat and wavers it from side to side. Then he smirks, unable to conceal the joke.

Bucky laughs and smacks it away. “Fine, you don’t trust me. But do you trust me enough to fuck me?”

Steve looks up at Bucky, gobsmacked. 

“I’ll take that as a ‘good enough.’” 

Feet planted on either side of Steve’s hips, Bucky sinks down with a satisfied groan. The clench and squish of slick around Steve makes his vision blur, and Bucky himself needs to take a moment to gather his wits about him.

“Fuck,” he says, rocking onto the balls of his feet so he can lift himself back up again. “ _Fuck_. I haven’t had a cock like this since…” he trails off.

For a moment Bucky almost looks confused…before he remembers himself and grinds back down again.

Steve has been inside betas before and it’s lovely, truly sublime. But he’s never been in a rut before, never shared a heat with a compatible omega. There’s no comparison between this and his well-intentioned but awkward fumbling with patient betas.

It isn’t that Steve is bad at sex, he’s actually been told he’s surprisingly good. It’s that his asthma slows him down, and his bad hip aches, and he can’t quite hear his partner with his deaf ear and pounding heart, and overall he knows he’s not much to look at, so—

But that was then. He’s a different person now. In a body so wonderful to occupy that Steve feels like he made it for himself. Sex used to be difficult, now it’s as easy as guiding Bucky’s hips where he wants them to go.

When Bucky's hips get too far away for too long, he hauls him closer. When the press and squeeze of him is just right, Steve holds him in place. In all likelihood, Bucky is strong enough to break Steve’s grip if he wanted. But instead he groans and squirms when he’s held still, and gasps when he’s stuffed full.

Steve has never experienced anything like it.

“See,” Bucky pants. “I knew you’d get the hang of it.”

Bucky’s hair has completely fallen loose now and it clings to his forehead and cheekbones. One strand droops down from his forehead, dangling towards Steve. A fat drop of sweat rolls down the lock of hair. Steve curls his tongue up towards the beat of sweat to catch it on the very tip of his taste buds. 

Bucky looks at him wide-eyed.

“I don’t usually do this face to face,” he says, apropos of nothing.

“Okay,” Steve says. And then, like a moron, adds, “That’s cool.”

“It’s just really intimate to knot like this,” Bucky continues. Even as he says this, he’s grinding his hips down. He clenches around Steve, and, startled, Steve bucks his hips up.

The agonized pleasure that spasms across Bucky’s face makes Steve weak.

“I, uh, think we better slow down then,” Steve says. “Or, I’m going to—”

“Fuck it,” Bucky says. He swipes his hair out of his face and pulls himself higher, nearly up and off of Steve altogether. “I’m game if you are.”

Articulately, Steve says, “Uh, yeah,” and then Bucky is working over him with new purpose.

He braces one hand on the center of his chest, the other clenches against Steve’s thigh, fingers curling into the meat of his quad. With this kind of leverage he can roll his hips in deep, showy undulations. Almost as if he’s dancing.

Pressure pools at the base of Steve’s cock, and it’s a new kind of pressure. Almost too full, too swollen. Steve forgets everything Erskine warned him about his new body. He panics, worried that the swelling will never stop.

Bucky seems to be struggling with the girth. His head is ducked, thighs clenched tight around Steve’s hips.

Steve’s head is swarmed with adrenaline, operating on baser instinct. He grips Bucky’s thighs, not thinking as he tries to drag his body away. To rescue him from Steve’s knot.

“Stop, Steve. Stop,” Bucky says, an edge of pain slicing through his voice. “You’ll rip me.”

Steve stills instantly. Horror drops through him.

Bucky laughs, pats his chest. Despite the tremble in his palm, the gesture rings sincere. “I’m okay, really. Let me just…Don’t move.”

Steve obeys, petrified as Bucky reaches down and wraps his fingers around the bulging base of his cock. Bucky squeezes down, hard, and the swelling subsides.

Bucky huffs, his body accommodating what he can’t grasp in his fist. The arm braced on the mattress is trembling. His whole body is trembling. At first, Steve thinks he’s in terrible terribly pain.

Then, Bucky’s hips twitch forward. He whimpers. And Steve’s eyes follow the convulsing line of his torso down to his still hard cock. Steve’s hand moves of its own accord towards it, but halts over his thigh. He isn’t sure.

“Do you still need to…?”

Steve can’t see Bucky’s face, but his fist is balled against the mattress. So tightly his knuckles are white. Bucky nods jerkily.

“Can I help?”

Bucky looks up then, and his face is blank with naked surprise. He shifts his hips again, a testing roll forwards. He taps the back of Steve’s hand, and Steve curls his fingers around the length of his cock. Hot and hard and a perfect fit in his hand.

He doesn’t stroke over Bucky with particular skill—too new and cautious to risk it—but Bucky still groans and shudders like the world is ending. His back arches, he braces a hand against Steve’s thigh and rides him with shallowly rolling hips. And when Bucky finally comes, it breaks something open in Steve.

Bucky sags against his chest, collapses even. Steve's cock is still swollen inside him, so Bucky pitches forward in a hunch. His forehead presses against the base of his throat, gasping down between them as he catches his breath. Everywhere they touch, they're damp with sweat and slick and come. The air from Bucky's panting feels cold against his abdomen, and Steve shivers.

"I can go again soon," Bucky promises.

Steve thinks that it'll be a shame to give this up, just sharing the space and breathing together. But his body is eager to go again. He nods.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: rape, forced orgasm, needles...all sorts of really dark shit.

After coming so much, so hard, it feels divine just to have his hole played with. The slow roll and shift of Steve’s fingers just against the rim, squelching with Bucky’s slick. It drives him wild. He rubs his face against the sheets, feeling totally unhinged from reality.

“You think you can come again?” Steve says, a low rasp that trembles in his chest. He’s as wrung out as Bucky, Bucky can smell it on him.

“Uhn uh,” he mumbles, shaking his head. “You’ve done me in.”

Steve’s fingers withdraw. “Is there a washcloth in here or something? We, uh…we made a mess.”

Bucky rolls onto his hip, tender with himself. Everything inside him feels like jelly, like it might all spill out if he doesn't move carefully. He shakes his head. “I’ll take a shower when you leave.”

Steve groans, alpha scent rolling off him as he pictures Bucky wet and naked. “Now that’s just cruel.”

Bucky snickers. “We’ll just have to budget time for a shower during your next rut.”

“I can come back for my next rut?” 

“I kinda figured you would. Unless you wanted to see somebody else.” Bucky says this with a grin. He has Steve eating out of the palm of his hand. Poor sorry sucker isn’t going to see any other omega but him for a while.

“No,” Steve says, already predictable. “I…I want to come back. I _will_ come back.”

“Tell the beta at the front desk that,” Bucky says, slipping into his familiar script on autopilot. “Block off a few days a month from now. Give us a call as soon as you start feeling rut symptoms come on so you’re sure to secure me.”

Sensing the change in tone, Steve demeanor becomes more somber. “I’ll do that,” he says, but Bucky doubts his tone. Steve dresses himself quietly; he seems consumed in his own world. When he’s ready to go, Bucky thinks he might leave without another word, but he pauses at the door and says, “Take care of yourself.”

 

\---

  

Steve’s rut is over, but Bucky’s heat has only just gotten started. He didn’t always get these insane heats, heats that lasted for days and days on end. Days like the desert scorch without night. These are a relatively new development, worsened by the longer he stays at the center.

Steve was a nice warm up. Gentle, virginal, eager to please. Time to get to the real world now.

Bucky checks his calendar, a slim leather bound journal that was given to him as a gift. It tells him that he’ll receive a regular next. Regulars make up the majority of Bucky’s schedule, five of them with particular consistency. 

Well, six now. If Steve really intends to return.

The anxiety and dread of seeing his next client eases some at the memory of Steve. Next time (if there is a next time) he’ll grip into the meat of Steve’s forearms. He’ll kiss his wrists and thank him for being such a good, big alpha. It feels a bit like repenting, and maybe he wants to repent to an alpha like Steve.

Fantasies of Steve carry Bucky through the process of preparation. He slicks himself with lube thinking about Steve’s thick fingers. He stretches himself out thinking about Steve’s knuckles. How good and big they felt stuffing him full, sliding in and out of him.

Orgasm nearly takes him by surprise, but he’s not allowed to come unless he’s with a client. Reluctantly, Bucky withdraws his fingers with a wet squelch and gets into the position that his next client likes best.

That’s how the client, Jack Rollins, finds him: facedown on the bed, knees folded under his chest, ass up.

It’s not as humiliating as it used to be. Now Bucky's body feels distant, an instrument he uses to carry alphas through their ruts.

“You’re always so closed up for me,” Rollins says, pressing a thumb against Bucky’s entrance. “It’s almost insulting.”

He tightens instinctively, even as slick dribbles down his thighs and Rollins pushes his thumb all the way inside. At first, the ring of muscle resists; Rollins is slow and exploratory right now, but he won’t be within a few minutes, and Bucky’s body remembers that. But then, eventually, it gives way for his thumb, and first two fingers. Then his whole hand.

“I’m not the first alpha you’ve seen today,” Rollins says, and curls his hand into a fist.

Bucky only lets out a shaky breath. Technically, he’s not allowed to disclose information about other clients. Technically, he can interpret this to mean that he’s not allowed to disclose when he’s seen a client at all.

But technically, _technically_ Rollins isn’t supposed to be here. He’s not in rut. He works for a branch of SHIELD that doesn’t qualify for heat and rut services. But the beta receptionist, Rumlow, sneaks him in between legitimate clients. Rumlow often sneaks himself in, too.

“I asked you a question, _omega_.” The way Rollins says ‘omega’ makes the word sound like a slur. And Bucky isn’t even a regular omega, he’s something else. Something even lower.

To further emphasize their power differential, Rollins pushes his fist in deeper, up to his wrist. Fuck. _Fuck._ Steve was big, but not so thick as the swell of Rollins’ forearm, prying Bucky open wide.  

Bucky tucks his forehead against the mattress and arches his back to accommodate the stretch.

Rollins just takes this as an invitation to force his fist deeper. With his other hand, he presses his palm tightly to Bucky’s still stiff erection. Rollins likes to keep his hand whenever he mates with Bucky. It might be a control thing; it makes Bucky feel cornered on all sides. At the whim of this alpha.

“Well?” Rollins prompts. “You didn’t stretch yourself like this, did you?”

“No,” Bucky gasps. There’s not enough room inside him for both Rollins’ fist and the air for his lungs. He feels like he’s being suffocated from the inside. “No, I had an alpha before you.”

“Of course you did,” Rollins grumbles, displeasure scraping his tone raw. “I can smell alpha all over you.”

Bucky just tries to breathe.

“Was it Steve Rogers?" 

“I can’t—”

Rollins unfolds his hand, rough fingertips dragging over Bucky’s prostate. He cries out, thrashes, but the tight press of Rollins’ hand against his cock keeps him from coming. Outstretched, Rollins’ hand is huge. Bucky’s eyes water. He knows what this is:

An interrogation.

“I can’t,” Bucky repeats, because he can’t get out the rest: _I can’t disclose client information._

But Rumlow rightfully interprets this as, _I can’t tell you I saw Steve Rogers._ He doesn’t smile or give any indication that he’s gotten what he wants, Bucky can just smell the self-satisfaction on him. Humid, sticky waves of alpha smugness. Rollins rubs his knuckles together, hand still outstretched.

Bucky doesn’t like it this rough. He likes it a little rough, sometimes, but only if he’s riled up into it. Rollins is too blunt, too prone towards undeserved violence. He always comes in owning Bucky, total and immediate possession.

He doesn’t like it. He wouldn’t like it. Except his body doesn’t need him to like it. Traitorous thing. His body responds all the same: with eager, terrible, enthusiasm.

His thighs are soaked to the knees with slick. His body spasms around Rollins, begging him deeper. The more humiliated he is, the more he craves.

The worst part? Rollins knows this.

Rollins withdraws his hand all at once, and Bucky bites down on the meat of his own palm. Rollins hooks a thumb against his rim, finding a way to stay inside him.

“His first rut, right?” Rollins gives the muscle ring a tug. Slick squelches out and humiliation pulses deep in Bucky’s belly. “That’s why you’re so shy. Isn't it? He reamed you inside out.”

Bucky grips the sheets between his fingers and twists. When he does, the faint scent of Steve is wrung out. A vestige from the wash. Bucky tucks his nose in there and allows himself a moment of olfactory fantasy.

A moment is all he gets; Rollins strikes him hard, across the back of the head. Not even to see his expression or force humility. Just to hurt him. Bucky learned quick that’s what Rollins prefers: senseless brutality.

“How many times did he have you?” Rollins claps his hand over a buttock. “Once?” He hits him hard again. Bucky tenses around his hand. “Twice?” Three more hits in rapid succession. “Give me a number.”

The impact on Bucky’s already heated skin is an inferno. His heat is a fierce forest fire, rampaging out of control.

Still, he manages to grit out, “You’ve got it all wrong, pal. Never met the guy.”

Rollins hands, both of them, are abruptly gone. Bucky leans up on one elbow to twist around to face him, only to be struck down with a blow to his face. He falls onto his chin, nipping the tip of his tongue.

There’s no blood, but he still tastes copper.

 

\---

 

Afterwards, Bucky lays in the damp spot of his own his own making. Sweat, drool, come. Bucky searches himself, feeling out for the humiliation and shame that should be ravaging him.

He can't find it. Can't find anything inside himself.

There’s nothing there.

 

\---  

 

The next morning, Bucky limps out of bed. He doesn’t feel much like himself. Contained and separate from the rest of the world, but not really present in his own body. It’s how he feels most mornings at the center. 

The center for Heats Yielded for Designated Rutting Alphas (or, HYDRA) is the only home Bucky can recall. He’s told that he came to the facility a ruined omega. That HYDRA took him in and cared for him.  And he’s grateful for their aid, he really is. Bucky is not a bad omega. He’s not ungrateful.

But sometimes, he wishes they’d just left him ruined. He feels pretty ruined right now.

He eats a few protein bars, takes a bath in Epsom salt, and drinks nearly a gallon of water. While he bathes, a beta cleans out the room again. Bucky returns to fresh sheets and a scent neutralizer that scrubs the room clean of Rollins’ alpha stench. For a moment, Bucky feels peace.

Then he checks his schedule. He’s starting with another regular today, one of Bucky’s favorites this time. This man is an only moderately fucked up alpha who will spend most of his appointment cuddling and taking advantage of Bucky’s passable Russian.

This client also prefers to prepare Bucky himself, which is fine by him.

Once they begin the rut, Pietro can move pretty fast.

The heat is dwindling into a low hum in his belly, like drinking whiskey on an empty stomach. Just being in the presence of an alpha warms him from the inside out. This could be enough, this will finish him out.

“Oh, fuck that’s good,” Bucky mumbles into the pillow, arching his hips up.

Bucky lays on his stomach while Pietro tucks his tongue inside him, stretching him open with leisurely strokes. So deep that his nose tucks against Bucky’s tailbone. He lays a hand over the small of Bucky’s back, pressing him down into the mattress when his hips jolt up too high. He isn’t rough with Bucky, almost as sweet as a lover, just firm.

“Gonna…” he mumbles, muffled against the pillow. “Gonna come.”

“Shh, _malysh_ ,” Pietro says, muffled against the soft press of Bucky’s thighs. "I've got you."

His cool breath gusts against Bucky’s damp hole and a quivers runs through all of him. He shoves his face back into the pillow to smother his groan.

Pietro laughs, digs his fingers into the meat of Bucky’s buttocks. The clench of his fingers pulls his cheeks farther apart, spreading his hole, and he spits into it. Slips inside and fucks him.

Pietro slides in easy, a smooth glide right up to the bulge of his knot. Though he’s not deeply seated inside Bucky yet, it’s not enough, and Bucky finds himself squirming back against him. Trying to get more.

So, he guides Bucky’s hips, only moving to snap his hips forward when he hauls Bucky back. On a particularly hard thrust, his knot pops past the tight right of muscle. Pietro goes dead still, concerned alpha pheromones drenching the air as he tries to control himself.

“Go ahead,” Bucky wheezes, but he braces himself.

Once Pietro starts moving, it’s like he can’t help himself. He grinds in deep, quick thrusts, jackrabbiting with unrestrained desperation. It makes Bucky feel as if he’s about to be split in two. After Rollins’ treatment last night, Bucky doesn’t have much left in him. He thrashes against Pietro, instinctively trying to get away.

“I’m sorry,” Pietro murmurs as his thrusts pick up pace. Slumped over Bucky, Pietro’s face is pressed into the mattress beside Bucky’s. He’s wincing, and Bucky strains to press a hand to his cheek. Soothing.

“It’s okay,” Bucky says. His hole is burning, swollen and needy. Pietro’s swollen knot bumps against it where it’s tenderest. He shudders. “Go ahead. Get it out, alpha.”

“Thanks,” Pietro manages, tears squeezing out of his eyes.

The tight clench of Bucky must be agony on his cock, compelled into intense orgasm by his rut. Pietro is an experiment too, like Steve. Unlike Steve, the ruts always prove too much for him. He fucks quick, hard, slapping his thighs against Bucky's buttocks. Grunting and heaving, eager to see this through.

Bucky feels bad for him. He feels bad for himself.

Pietro comes hard, all at once. He hauls Bucky's hips up high and pumps into him. It squelches out of the tight seal of Bucky’s ass, dribbling down his thighs in thick strands. Feels good, satisfies something primal in Bucky.

(And something conditioned.)

“Gonna pass out,” Bucky mumbles. He’s come so many times that his lips feel numb, his body loose at the joints. He’s not yet sore, not yet tired, just full. “Keep going if you hafta.”

Pietro shakes his head. Slides out. He kisses the back of Bucky’s neck, just above the top notch of vertebrae. “Thank you, _malysh_. I’ll see you next month.” He says this in a whisper, then slinks away. The scent of his shame clings to the air even after he leaves.

 

\---

 

Bucky waits to feel something. Feels nothing. Figures that’s better anyway.

 

\---

 

The sun rises and Bucky slumbers through it. He wakes when the sun rises into the trees, sun dappling over his skin. When he comes into his body, there’s no wet heat slicking his thighs. No pressure at the base of his stomach, begging to be filled.

He stretches out, luxuriating in his normal body. Satiated and logical. The heat is over. He feels like himself. He feels  _wonderful._

Bucky is just leaning up to look out his window at the bright day when his bedroom door opens. The scent of alpha burns his nostrils. He turns his head, and two alphas seize him under the arms. Rollins and some other alpha who only visits Bucky on occasion.

They smell determined. Below the determination is excitement.

“Oh Jesus, no,” Bucky begs. “Come on just…just one day. I just want one day, _please._ ”

They don’t care. Someone drags out the wooden chair from his closet, legs creaking against the floor. Once it's settled before him, Bucky feels that terribly numbness settle in where the dread should be. He tries one more time, “Please,” but of course they don’t listen. He’s bound to the chair while a beta doctor prepares the syringe. He pinches the skin of Bucky’s inner left thigh.

This is happening.

No one, not even Bucky, says anything when the needle sinks in. The serum stings, but worse is the waves of hot and cold that shock through him. Nausea rolls through him, then settles in his stomach where it stays. A constant churning.

They release him from the chair. His limbs tremble, but he makes it to the bed to curl in on himself.  His heat is rising. Again. He wants to cry, but can’t.

Rollins waits by the door for the others to leave.

 

\---

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes at the bottom for specific trigger warnings and synopsis

* * *

“Oh, to see what they did to you. It would break your captain’s heart.”

_Winter Soldier: The Bitter March, #3_

* * *

 

  

Steve steps down from the treadmill, pouring sweat down his chest and spine. His legs feel hollow as he lowers himself to the floor.The muscles in his arms quiver as Steve squeezes water from a plastic bottle into his mouth, uncaring what spills down his jaw and front. His lungs heave, his muscles tremble, but his body craves more.

Last night he couldn’t sleep—a heat that prickled under his skin and swelled at the base of his stomach. He’d stayed up all night, staring at his ceiling and just sweating it out. It’s been like this for days.

Something is wrong.

For starters, Steve can’t stop thinking about him. Bucky. His smell, his easy smile, the liquid roll of his hips. He scents Bucky in the cream of his morning coffee, mistakes a stranger for him on the metro, and aches for him at night. Alone. Twitching in his bed.

Steve had never met anyone like him.

Grit jawed and stubborn, Steve tried to exercise it out of himself. He figured it couldn’t be so if he wouldn’t allow it to be so. It’s only been two weeks since he last visited HYDRA. He can’t be in rut again. He can’t.

But he is.

He taps the pause button on Spotify, cutting Kurt Cobain off mid-mumble (Steve is still on the fence with Nirvana, but he likes the grungy guitar riffs for a workout...especially in this new body). A quick scroll through his favorited contacts leads him to Dr. Erskine's number. 

He doesn't want to call. He doesn't  _need_ to call. He's fine, he's fine, he's--

Next door, he can smell his omega neighbor moving around her apartment. She is young, maybe early twenties. Pretty, from what Steve can remember of her, but admittedly she's never caught his eye. Through the walls, he can smell when she bends over. Can smell that she's a few weeks away from her heat. It’s fucking with his head.

He dials Erskine again. When he picks up, Steve explains the issue in an embarrassed rush. As he talks, he packs in preparation for the center. The task of finding the lid for his toothpaste distracts him enough to verbalize his symptoms.

Though he is accustomed to doctors, Steve has less experience discussing  _sex_ with a doctor. Erskine takes it all in stride.

"I suppose it's possible--"

“I’m not asking if it’s possible.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and paces to the other side of the room to collect his shoes. “I’m asking if I _am._ ”

On the other end of the line, Erskine exhales. “Increased irritability, sensitivity to scent, and elevated arousal. It sounds as if you are. Would you like me to come get you and bring you to the Center for Heats Yielded—”

“I can drive myself,” Steve snaps and ends the call. He grabs the duffle bag from the edge of his bed and heads out.

 

\---

 

When Steve arrives the center, the female beta at the front is surprised to see him.

“Mr. Rogers,” she says, though Steve can’t remember meeting her. She scents the air, the rut reeking off of him. “Back already?”

Steve doesn’t know how he ever found this facility soothing. The bright white interior stings his eyes. The lack of scent only makes him feel as if he’s stewing in his own, subjecting everyone around him to it.

“Bucky,” is all he can manage to say to her.

She tries to fuss over paperwork, things that Steve still needs to sign, but Steve just moves to the door that leads to the omegas, to Bucky. He stares at her until she opens the door. Eventually she meanders over to unlock it for him, all the while fumbling the keys. She must be new because she doesn’t know which key to use and keeps trying the wrong one.

When she finally gets the door open, she lays a hand on Steve’s bicep and says, “Just so you know, Mr. Rogers, the omega may be occupied or not ready to see you—“ 

Steve can scent Bucky’s heat from down the hall. He charges towards it, large strides to bring him closer to Bucky faster. He thinks of how he’ll hold the back of his neck. Thinks about the soft baby hairs there and across his thick thighs. How sweet the clench of those thighs are.

But when he gets to the door and is suddenly struck by a foreign scent. The scent of another alpha.

Steve’s hackles raise, his breath catches with a sudden rage. An overwhelming alpha instinct to protect that Steve always felt, but never with this level of hormonal overture. He takes a step back to kick it open, but doesn’t have the chance to. The door opens suddenly and two men squeezes out: the beta receptionist from before and another, gigantic, alpha.

“Just checking up,” they explain to Steve’s escort. She nods as if this is all very normal, and shepherds them back towards the lobby.

A low growl pours from Steve's throat as they pass. They smell wrong to him, these two men emerging from Bucky's room. Their scent is...smug. Satisfied. Perhaps sensing Steve's territorialism, they don’t make eye contact with Steve, even as he sizes them up.

Inside the room someone, Bucky, groans.

Steve's attention snaps back to him. Bucky is laid over the bed, knees propped under his hips with his splayed wide. For a moment, Steve isn't sure that this is Bucky at all. Last time Steve was here, it was near the beginning of Bucky’s heat. Just warming up. The omega sprawled out in this bed seems near the end of the heat, a totally different person. Where Bucky was vivacious and sharp before, he is now inert. Nearly catatonic. His face is obscured in the mash of pillows, but Steve finds Bucky in his dark, curling hair. His scent.

Bucky’s heat smells woodsy, primal like a campfire. The kind of warmth your skin craves when it is puckered with goose flesh. But under the sweet notes of vanilla and smoke, Steve smells something wrong. Something overripe.

He looks and smells over exerted, and the scent doesn’t make Steve want to fuck the heat out of him. It makes him want to curl around Bucky and take care of him. Is that why those men were in here? Who cleans him up and rubs the aches from his overworked muscles? Who feeds him and assures that he drinks enough water? Who asks if he's okay? Who cares for him?

Steve approaches the bed slowly. “Bucky?” He asks, as if unsure that it’s him.

Bucky’s head rolls up and at first, he looks dreadful. Dead exhausted and poorly used. Then he smiles, sweet and bright as anything. Happy pheromones roll off him and Steve finds his endocrine system responds in turn. Happy alpha scents mingling with happy omega. He gets onto the bed.

“C’mere, Steve.” Bucky rolls over, letting his legs clamp together, open, and fall shut again. He winces at the motion, but it’s only a flicker before he’s drawing Steve down over himself. “Let me kiss that handsome face.”

Any reservations Steve had dissolve when their mouths meet. Bucky wraps an arm around his neck, drawing Steve’s body down over his own. Their hips meet and Steve twitches, hypersensitive. 

Bucky laughs, but the sound is slow. Under water. All of his movements seem under water. 

“In rut already?” Bucky wraps his legs around Steve like he did the first time. He tucks his puzzled expression into Steve’s shoulder. “I thought...has it been a month already?”

“No,” Steve says, now his turn to be puzzled. “I went into rut early. It’s only been a few weeks...”

Then he pauses, the scent of Bucky’s heat shifting in his nostrils. That overripeness again. He itches to ask why Bucky is also in heat, a mere two weeks later, but...Bucky mentioned that he was also altered. "Super omega," he'd called himself sardonically. Heat cycles are personal. Medical. Not for Steve, a client, to probe about.

But he can’t help asking, “Do you not remember?” 

“Of course I remember you,” Bucky misses the point. “I’ll always remember you.”

And then he grinds their hips together, and Steve loses all higher brain function. Or any brain function whatsoever.

 

—-

 

He’s got Bucky on his back, legs drawn up to his chest, leaking down his thighs and into the bed. Steve hooks those lovely long legs over his shoulders, rubbing his scruff against his inner thighs, and presses into Bucky.

Or tries to. Bucky is too tight, and the length of Steve slides down towards his tailbone.

“Try again,” Bucky groans, tilting his hips up. So, Steve obliges.

Still, he can’t get in. Bucky is wet, gooey almost, but his hole is a tight clench when Steve bumps up against it. With a moue of frustration, Bucky folds his legs together, letting them pivot next to him.

“Easier from the side,” he explains. “Try again.”

Though reticent, Steve obliges. He tries, gently and slowly, and manages to ease a bare inch inside. The clench is unbelievable, too tight to be pleasurable. Not for Steve, and certainly not for Bucky.

“Bucky,” Steve hesitates. 

Bucky doesn’t let him finish. Despite Steve’s size and positional advantage, Bucky flips them over with ease. He clenches his thighs around his hips and tries to force the rest of Steve inside him.

He’s still too tight. His hole is swollen, Steve can feel it now, a near-purple furl of abused tissue.

“Bucky,” Steve tries again, laying a hand on his chest to steady him.

Bucky won’t be steadied.

Frustrated now, groaning and crying with the effort, Bucky squirms atop Steve. He manages to pry himself open enough for another inch, but it looks as if it's killing him. He's bright red, not breathing. When he tries to shift forward, Steve's cock pops out of him. Bucky slams a fist against the mattress.

“I can do it,” he gasps. His whole body is red, purpling scarlet at the cheeks. “I can.”

He manages to cram Steve inside himself again, this time taking more. But the clench of him is wrong, too tight, too much. His thrashing hips and wincing expression betray how much pain he’s in. 

And this, finally, Steve can’t stand. He tilts his hips back, withdrawing. When Bucky chases after him, Steve takes his hips in both hands, stilling him. Not allowing him to move. “You’re going to hurt yourself, Bucky. Stop.”

Bucky grinds down atop him, still trying to force it in. But when Steve holds on, when it becomes clear he isn’t going to relent, Bucky gives up. His head drops forward, hair curtaining his expression.

Misery reeks in the air between them, mingling with shame. All emanating from Bucky, but the scent coaxes undernotes of distress from Steve as well. Nearly crying himself, Steve strokes Bucky’s outer thigh, trying to ease him.

“It’s okay,” he hushes. “You don’t have to. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But your rut...”

Steve’s rut is a sharp, urgent need in each muscle. But just the scent of Bucky eases it down to an aching simmer. He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Wet droplets smack the center of Steve’s chest. It takes a moment for him to register that these are tears. Bucky is crying.

Steve feels a new kind of ache now. And a panic. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he should try to talk to Bucky about it, or just let him be. So, he wraps his arms tightly around him, and repositions him into the dense cradle of muscle that’s his new body.

The tenderness just wracks Bucky with sobs. He tries to apologize, but can't catch enough breath to say anything through the tears. Steve doesn't mind. He just waits, rubbing circles into his quivering back.

When there seems to be nothing left in him, Steve loosens his arms and lets Bucky slump to the side.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, laughing a little now. He seems more himself.

Steve hesitates, sensing that Bucky wants to say more but needs to be asked. Then, choosing each word one at a time, he says, “Seems like a lot is expected of you.”

Bucky nods. “Everyone wants a piece of me but don’t want to do the work of chewing.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -steve goes into rut early, very strange  
> -steve finds bucky in bad shape after rollins and rumlow leave his room  
> -bucky doesn't respect his body's boundaries and tries to have sex despite being too sore  
> -steve shuts it down
> 
> Thanks for reading. For those of you who were worried, my policy is one of happy endings.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

"By this time the soldier was reduced to a mere lump, and when the maid took away the ashes next morning she found him, in the shape of a small tin heart.

All that was left of the dancer was her spangle, and that was burnt as black as a coal."

Hans Christian Andersen, _The Steadfast Tin Soldier_

* * *

 

 

Bucky wakes up swamped in the reek of a needy alpha. Anxiety spikes the air, the scent of Bucky’s own dread, until he turns and stares down the broad back of Steve Rogers. Pale and lightly freckled, Steve’s back bobs with deep, slumbering breaths. Bucky’s heart eases some, relieved by the sight and smell of him.

Even in rut, Steve smells safe. Like the biggest alpha in the yard. Capable to the point of near-recklessness. Bucky wonders if Steve always smells so confident. The kind of alpha that doesn’t need the assurance of victory to enter a fight.

Safe harbored in this scent, Bucky lets himself remember and feel the shame of what happened last night. Of what he did. Of what he couldn't do.

Bucky is mostly ambivalent about his body. He knows he’s handsome, certainly. But that isn’t for him. It’s for someone else to enjoy. His physical ability—his height, how fast he can run, how much he can lift—is a secondary aspect. Mostly, Bucky knows what his body is for.

It’s for someone else to look at. For someone else to enjoy.

 _This one knows what it’s good for,_ an alpha client had said to Rumlow. _So good and obedient._

 _Good little slut,_ another had said.  _I like the ones that know how to be a good omega._

Sometimes, it makes him feel sick. He can admit that. He can admit that the alphas who use his body make him feel small, dirty somehow.

But the use of his body is also an affirmation.

Bucky is not the most popular omega at HYDRA. The omegas are organized by traffic, by who receives the most clients. For example, Natasha sees more clients than anyone, and so she is given the first room in the hall. (She likes to remind him, grimly smiling, that it’s also _the biggest_.) But those that see Bucky, see him exclusively and often. He has more regulars than anyone, and they include some of the highest profile SHIELD alphas.

Like Steve.

Steve shifts in his sleep, almost as if to rouse himself, but he plummets back into unconsciousness without opening his eyes. He makes a soft, needy sound in the back of his throat. Beseeching. Bucky couldn’t help Steve last night. And so he radiates desperation, even in his sleep.

He needs to be taken care of.

Though Bucky _likes_ Steve, is attracted to him even, there’s a sickness spreading through his gut. As if every soft organ inside him has gone hard. His stomach, his esophagus, his heart. It’s easier to set his body aside right now.

His hand is a separate entity as it presses underneath Steve’s slumbering body. The hardness under his fingertips, drawn into his palm, is only factual—nerves relaying information to the brain. The groan that his touch elicits from a half-awake Steve is also factual. Steve’s groan conveys the confused beginning of arousal that Bucky needs to coax out.

“Bucky,” Steve sighs, grinding his hips down into the pressure.

Bucky smiles a little. He rolls over to sling a leg over the backs of Steve’s thighs, spooning his side as he rubs him slow. Steve’s hips roll, his moans buried in the pillow as he ruts, face down into Bucky’s touch. He's lost in it, in how good Bucky can make him feel.

His arousal soaks the air and the scent draws Bucky farther away from his own body and into Steve’s pleasure. When Steve gasps and comes, empathetic adrenaline surges through Bucky’s body too.

Adequately discorporated and fully involved in Steve’s pleasure now, Bucky rolls Steve onto his back and straddles his hips. Steve is flushed, expression loose and dopey as he gazes up at Bucky. Bucky smiles again, this time meaning it a little more.

“I’m going to ride the rut out of you, alpha,” he tells him lowly.

Bucky lifts his weight up onto his knees, ready to sink over Steve’s still hard cock, when Steve presses a hand to his chest to stop him. Frowning, Steve scents the air. Delicately, he leans in to scent Bucky too. The tip of his long nose brushes under Bucky's jaw and he shudders.

“We shouldn’t do this,” he says definitively. “You’re not in heat anymore.”

Huh. Bucky takes a moment to consider his body again, and…Shit, Steve is right. He isn’t. There’s no slick between his thighs or urgent need in his groin. He’s more lucid, able to calculate and think this through.

The moment Steve leaves, they’ll induce Bucky’s heat again.

“Let me take care of you anyway,” Bucky says, rolling his hips.

Steve’s cock slides between Bucky’s cheeks, drooling and still wet with come. His hips twitch up, as if briefly tempted, but Steve shifts up onto his elbows. He sits up.

“No, Buck." Though his pupils are blown wide and he pours the scent of arousal, Steve's tone is firm. "No. I’ll rip you.”

Bucky leans back, now sitting in Steve’s lap instead of straddling him. Panic courses through him. Steve is slipping through his fingers. He’ll go see another omega. He might prefer someone else and never visit Bucky again.

“I’ve got other holes, you know,” Bucky tries, not without an edge of bitterness.

Steve’s face is so stunned, it’s as if Bucky just struck him.

Abashed, Bucky winces. “I’m sorry, that was... Just don’t go. I can take care of you. Don't go.”

Unsubtly, Steve scents the air again. He must pick up on Bucky’s notes of distress because his own scent eases into a soothing musk. He gathers Bucky closer into his lap, tucking his nose against the hollow of his shoulder. Bucky isn’t sure what to make of this.

“You don’t have to take care of me in order for me to stay.”

Bucky snorts. “You ever try to weather a rut without knotting?”

"Nope." Steve shakes his head and shoots back, “Have you?”

Bucky laughs and shoves at his shoulder. Steve bobs, laughing. The smile is broad, unself-conscious. He’s gorgeous like this. Bucky’s never met another alpha like him.

“You’re joking now," Bucky says. "But you won’t be soon.”

 

\---

 

“You’re a real martyr, you know that?”

Steve is laid flat on his back, fists clenched at his sides. He stares up at the ceiling resolute. Eyes hard, jaw grit. He’s pouring sweat, saturating the whole room in his scent. Even if Bucky were in the dead of his heat, no one would be able to smell him over all these pheromones pumped out of Steve’s body.

Jesus. SHIELD really did a number on this guy. Not only has he gone into rut early, but it's an  _intense_ rut.

“I’ve got hands and a mouth, you know,” Bucky says. "You ever knot a mouth?"

Steve is clearly in pain, but Bucky can’t help smirking down at him. Can't help messing with him, just a little. He has the aura of someone just begging to be fucked with.

“Don’t talk like that,” Steve wheezes. He skims the backs of his knuckles across Bucky's bicep. “Not when you look like that. Not when you _smell_ like that.”

Bucky smiles, bemused. He lifts his arm to sniff his own armpit. His nose is underwhelmed by what it finds there. Just sweat, nothing too appealing. Nothing that should attract an alpha like Steve. Still, might as well offer.

“You mean this scent?” he asks, lifting his pit to Steve.

Steve inhales like Bucky'd body odor is French perfume. He groans and rolls over onto his side, back to Bucky.

Bucky cackles and leans over him. “C’mon, Stevie. I got a nice, wet mouth for you.”

“You’ve got a big mouth is what you’ve got.”

Bucky blinks at him, surprised by his resolve. “You’re really not going to let me help, are you?”

“You wanna help?” Steve asks, casting a glance over his shoulder at Bucky.

Bucky nods, licking his lower lip.

“Then _distract_ me. Talk to me. Please, just-- Tell me something about yourself, about anything.”

That’s not what Bucky was expecting. He pauses for a second, thinking. Steve has been kind to him. No other alpha has been able to resist him for this long, would have ravaged him dry by now. Steve is different. Steve actually seems to...

Bucky can't even hope for it.

“I could tell you a story…” he says slowly, “But it’s a secret.”

This catches Steve’s interest. He rolls towards Bucky again, but Bucky notes that he breathes through his mouth. He nods, spreads out his hand across the mattress between them, a gesture Bucky reads to mean, _I’m listening._

Bucky sizes him up for a moment and considers throwing the whole thing in. Steve’s eyes are glassy. Bucky could just tell him _Cinderella,_ and Steve would listen in rapture. But there’s an earnestness there, a goodness in Steve that Bucky wants to appeal to.

Being brave, he wets his lips and tells the story.

 

\---

 

“So, as this story goes, a little boy received a set of 25 tin soldiers for his birthday. Neatly painted in red, outfitted with little guns and everything. Real swell gift. The boy liked it a lot, except the 25th tin soldier had a defect. It stood on one leg. The one legged soldier could stand just fine on its own, but the boy still set it aside. One day, the tin soldier—being sentient and all, forgot to mention that—noticed a music box ballerina who also stood on one leg—”

“This is _The Steadfast Tin Soldier,_ ” Steve mumbles, tongue thick. “Hans Christian Anderson. I’ve heard it before.”

Bucky snorts. Even ravaged with the rut, Steve manages to be a smartass. “You wanna tell the story then?”

“Sure,” Steve says, grinning. “A jack-in-the-box tells the soldier to lay off the ballerina. He doesn’t, so Jack shoves him out a window. He, uh, he goes through the sewer, there’s a rat involved, but somehow the soldier to get back to the ballerina. I don’t remember how…”

“He was swallowed by a fish that the family later had for dinner.” Bucky's smile is genuine now, his favorite reveal in any fairy tail. The soldier is swallowed whole by a marine beast. All is lost. Or so it seems until the soldier is miraculously delivered home. Jonah and the whale, but for kids.

Steve laughs. “Somehow less believable than sentient toys.”

Bucky's eyes roll up into his skull. “Can I finish the story now?”

“Go on.”

Bucky stares at Steve for a moment, thinking. “So, you know that the soldier is reunited with the ballerina and they think everything is going to work out. They think everything is going to be okay because they’re together again.

“And…” Bucky hesitates, hating this part of the story. “You know that the jack-in-the-box throws them both in the fire. The soldier _and_ the ballerina, yeah? That they’re both burned alive?”

Sensing that Bucky is serious, Steve’s tone becomes a little more somber. “That’s how I remember it, yeah.”

Bucky swallows. He can't go on.

Steve shifts, lifting up on one elbow. "What is it?"

"Nothing, just...I heard a version of the story where..." Bucky's voice is shaking now. He calms himself with a few deep breath. Slowly, quietly, he murmurs, “What if the tin soldier survived? What if he was registered as killed in action so no one would go looking for him? What if the jack-in-the-box took that KIA soldier and…” Bucky looks around the room, his room. “Brought him somewhere else.”

Steve stares at him, wide eyed and horrified. “Bucky...”

Bucky shrugs. “It’s just a story, Steve.”

 

\---

 

Steve stays for another night, but wakes Bucky in the middle of the night. He is wracked with sobs, entire body trembling. The rut must be agony untreated. His body must feel like it's about to burst, all that blood and all those hormones coursing through him with nowhere to go.

Steve leaves a foot of space between them.  

Bucky sighs. “I wish you’d let me…”

“I’m fine,” Steve grits out. “I can do this.”

"Just let me  _do_ something," Bucky snaps, frustrated.

Exasperated, Steve huffs, turns over, and pulls Bucky into his arms. For a moment, Bucky thinks he might grind against his thigh and ride him dry. But, no. Steve just tucks his nose against the scent gland in Bucky's throat and wraps all his limbs around him, clutching their bodies together.

"This is enough," he says.

\---

 

By morning, he’s successfully sweated out his rut. Steve seems loathe to leave, dawdling through a shower and hovering around Bucky.

“Come with me,” he whispers, cupping Bucky’s elbow. "I'll take you back to my place. I can keep you there, I can take care of you, I can--"

Bucky laughs, a dry sound. “Would you believe you’re not the first alpha to propose that?”

“Bucky,” Steve says. “I’m being serious.”

“Then think it through,” Bucky says, still smiling. “Would they really let me just walk out with you? And even if you got me out, then what? They just let me go?”

Steve pauses, nods. The slump of his shoulders speaks to his defeat. “Take care of yourself Bucky.”

 

\---

 

Bucky takes a shower after Steve leaves. He whistles in the water, luxuriates in the heat and soap. Though he knows what waits for him when he leaves the bathroom, he enjoys himself. Enjoys his clear mind and easy body. This is what life could be like, would he were a normal omega.

When he gets out, the wooden chair and heat-inducing serum are waiting for him. He submits to both willingly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a light chapter so that the next might hurt all the more


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I warned y’all. This chapter is rough. Detailed warnings and synopsis in the end notes.
> 
> This is totally skippable. The next chapter should be nicer if any of this seems like it will be too much for you. <3

Bucky is adrift in his induced heat, compliant and easy. When he’s like this, all drugged up, it isn’t so hard. Nothing is.

He’s seeing his most important client today, Alexander Pierce, the owner of HYDRA. So, he gets ready with particular care. Bucky dresses himself in the clothes that Pierce gave him. He combs his hair, but leaves it loose the way Pierce likes it.

Then he kneels on the floor by the door and waits.

He is so attuned to Pierce that he can smell the man the moment he enters the building. A rich, refined odor with a sharp ranging finish. Like tobacco or brown liquor. Bucky fills his nose and mouth with it now so he won’t gag on it later.

The waiting is always the worst part. It’s not so bad once Pierce gets into the room. But smelling his approaching scent, holding it on his tongue and knowing that it’s all about to begin, it’s a torture of its own. Even in the haze of his induced heat, the dread creeps through.

The door opens and Bucky ducks his head, a low bow. Pierce ignores him at first, striding to the dresser to take off his tie and shoes. He observes himself in the mirror propped up there, perhaps fixing his hair or watching himself remove his cufflinks. Then he strides to Bucky.

Pierce walks in big, purposeful steps. Even when the room is small. He is a man determined.

A silver chain dangles in Bucky’s line of vision. At the end is a pendant depicting Saint Sebastian, arrows shot through his torso and thighs. He turns his eyes up to God, expression peaceful and rapt.

Bucky lifts his eyes up to Pierce, questioning. Pierce smiles.

“It’s a gift, sweetheart,” he says and loops the saint’s medal over Bucky’s neck. The chain is thin, feather light. Bucky feels its weight all the same.

He touches his fingers to the pendant. It is cool to the touch, warming against his skin. There’s a significance to this saint, he just can’t place what it is. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Of course.” He holds Bucky’s chin in the palm of his hand. “You’re special to me. A rare treat to tease.”

 _Sure,_ Bucky thinks, _We could call what you do “teasing.”_  

“Take it out,” Pierce commands.

On autopilot, Bucky unzips his trousers and draws Pierce out from the folds of fabric. Pierce is already hard, hot and thick and jutting out proudly. Bucky rubs his tongue along the underside, inhaling deeply so the alpha pheromones can take him away from here. 

It’s so easy when he submits to it—or at least, easier.

It's not usually this difficult to lose himself in this.

Pierce presses into his mouth, and Bucky has to act fast to sheath his teeth behind his lips before he accidentally scrapes the alpha. He does well and Pierce rubs a circle behind his ear, praising. The weight of Pierce is familiar in his mouth.

“Take it,” Pierce says, gripping Bucky’s hair at the base of his skull. He tugs his head back to elongate Bucky’s throat, and his cock slides down easily. “That’s it. There’s a good omega. There’s my omega, my boy.”

Bucky holds him there, lodged in his throat, for thirty seconds. Forty. A minute. Two. His eyes stream and his throat convulses for air, dragging the length of Pierce deeper down his esophagus. He whimpers, and that uses the last of his breath.

Pierce laughs, jerks Bucky’s head from side to side because that makes it so much worse. Bucky coughs up saliva in thick strands that bubble around the corner of his mouth. When his eyes roll back in his head, Pierce just presses deeper.

Instinctively, Bucky struggles; he’s on the verge of passing out. In a panic, he braves both hands on his hips and pushes Pierce off of him. He is stronger than Pierce, much stronger. It is easy to push him away, and he could have done it a while ago. So, why didn’t he?

When Pierce’s cock pops free, Bucky coughs up more saliva, spluttering from his mouth and nose. He gulps down as much air as he can. It burns his throat and lungs, and it’s so, so good to breathe again.

Pierce is pissed. “You know better than that. I trained you better.”

Pierce strikes him hard across the face, forcing a wet sob from Bucky. He can’t catch his breath and now his whole face radiates with the strike. 

In a quick turnaround, Pierce holds his cheeks in both hands. “Breathe, honey,” he coaxes. “Breathe, now.”

Bucky nods and forcibly slows his hyperventilations down to a normal pace. Pierce watches fondly, stroking over his jaw.

“There we go.” He lays the tip of his cock against Bucky’s lower lip. “Now let’s try again.”

“No,” Bucky coughs. “Wait. Please—”

Pierce plunges back down his throat, stopping it up. Bucky doesn’t struggle this time. He takes it, takes it like a good omega.

Pierce is already thick and getting thicker. His knot swells behind Bucky’s teeth, forcing his jaw wider. Bucky flexes his tongue against it, knowing intuitively that this is the way to soothe it down, but Pierce claps the back of his head.

“Don’t,” he growls, possessive alpha musk rolling off him in a deep, dense fog. “Let it grow.”

And Bucky? He obeys. He lets it swell and swell and swell until his jaw strains, until his dry lips crack. The lack of air tinges his vision in a deep red, spotted with black, and still the knot swells. There’s no room in his mouth for his tongue, no room in his throat for his veins.

Something pops in the hinges of Bucky’s jaw. A terrible, hollow crack from each side that resounds down his entire mandible, meeting at the tip of his chin. 

Bucky blacks out.

 

\---

 

“You fell asleep in front of the TV again.”

Bucky leans up on their leather couch, blinking up at Steve. The setting sun streams in through the windows, casting Steve’s eyelashes in gold. He looks sweet, slack-jawed and smiling like this.

“Whoops.” Bucky turns towards their kitchen where a pot bubbles on the gas-burning stove. The window over the sink is open, a preventative measure to insure their touchy smoke detector doesn’t go off. “Smells good. What’s for dinner?”

“Pasta.” Steve grins down at Bucky and stoops over the back of the couch for a kiss. “I know, big surprise.” 

Bucky holds his face in both hands and groans directly into Steve’s mouth. “Not so surprising considering it’s the only thing you know how to make.”

“Hey now. That’s not true.” Steve swats his thigh lightly, not enough to hurt. Steve would never hurt Bucky. “I can make eggs.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, nodding as if this makes good sense. “Of course. How could I forget your impressive breakfast repertoire?”

“Eggs. Toast. Cold cereal. Poptarts. You name it.” Steve crosses back to the kitchen.

Bucky leans up to watch him walk away. He wishes he could see Steve’s face just one more time, but his back is to him now. All broad shoulders and tapered waist. A perfect alpha.

“Shame I won’t get to eat any of it.”

“Why’s that, Buck?”

Bucky leans back onto the couch. He stares up at the ceiling. Alpha stench is beginning to cloud his senses, dragging him out of this rare peace.

“Because this is a dream.”

 

\---

 

When he comes to, Bucky is laid out over his bed. Come is crusting on his neck and chest. The trail of dried semen in the corner of his mouth suggests that Pierce came in his mouth while he was passed out.

His jaw is sore but no longer dislocated. And that’s a blessing. Because he’s no longer alone with Pierce. Rollins, Rumlow, and a couple other HYDRA employees have joined them, crowding the room with their aroused musk.

Noticing that he is awake, Pierce hauls Bucky upright only to push him over onto his stomach. His head hangs off the side of the mattress and Rumlow seizes him by the hair.

“We have good news for you,” Rumlow says, grinning up to Pierce. “Don’t we, sir?”

“Steve Rogers just booked you for the next twelve months. Once a week. Poor man must be anticipating constant ruts.” Pierce’s fingers trail over the back of Bucky’s neck, following where the chain lays against his skin. “You have done _very_ good work, omega.” 

Bucky winces. He doesn’t know how he is responsible for Steve’s irregular ruts, but believes that he is to blame. Guilt gnaws a hole in his gut. His constant heats are a torment on par with eternal damnation. He’d never willingly condemn another man to his fate. Especially not a man like Steve Rogers. 

But Bucky doesn’t say as much.

Pierce presses two fingers inside him, slick with lube. It feels good, unbearably good, and Bucky cants his hips back into the sensation. Pleasure sparks all the way up his spine, lighting to the base of his skull. He rocks against Pierce’s touch, in sync with his thrusts.

“This is your reward.” Pierce’s fingers crook, sending a burst of pleasure down to his toes.

He hates it. He loves it. He’s made for it.

“Please—” Bucky mumbles down into his clenched fists. The gifted saint’s medal hangs down, skimming the mattress.

Rumlow hauls his head up higher. “Don’t ask the mattress, ask them.” He jerks Bucky’s face towards the onlookers. “What do you want, whore?”

Bucky cringes away from their gaze. Pierce catches this and, fingers still inside Bucky, claps him hard over the ass. Bucky tenses around his fingers, more sensation skittering up his spine.

”Answer him,” Pierce commands. “You’ve been asked a question.”

It’s too real. He’s too present in his body, in the ache of his jaw and the eyes on him, to let himself go. He can’t do it. He can’t. Bucky’s eyes close, squeezing out tears. He shakes his head.

Pierce curls his free fingers around the silver chain and pulls hard. The thin chain cuts between the cartilaginous knobs of Bucky’s trachea, startling him.

“You’re right, omega,” Pierce says, all honey now.

Bucky glances back to him, surprised.

“You’re a _whore_ ,” Pierce continues. “And whores get paid. Does anybody have a quarter?”

The crowd laughs. Bucky’s stomach churns with shame. The necklace loosens around his neck but he can still feel the gift carving into him, leaving its mark.

“I got a nickel,” Rollins says. He steps forward and presses it into Bucky’s palm. His fingers close around it, the smooth edges digging into his hot hand.

“Aw, that’s about what you’re worth anyway,” Rumlow says. “Thank him.” 

“Thank you, alpha,” Bucky says. He’s going on autopilot again, finally, and that’s a blessing. The shame has driven him deep into himself. He’ll be able to let go soon; he won’t be here much longer.

Rollins grins, a horrible sight. “If a nickel buys me gratitude, what does a dollar get me?”

He crams a dollar bill into Bucky’s fist. Bucky squeezes down on it and the nickel, bracing himself. On instinct, his mouth drops open, pressing out his tongue. His jaw is still so, so sore, but he sets that aside. He sets his whole body aside and lets himself drift above the bed.

Rumlow laughs, guides Bucky’s head down over his friend’s cock. Bucky’s no longer crying. He doesn’t even whimper as Rumlow bobs his head up and down, up and down. He gags when Rollins hits the back of his throat, but otherwise, he disengages.

Bucky isn’t here anymore. Thank god. 

Other HYDRA employees approach. They press bills and coins into his hands in exchange for rubbing against his hip, against his stomach, into his mouth, and between his thighs. Their cocks are hot and leaking wherever they touch, wherever they sink in. There’s so many of them, so much money that he can’t hold it all.

“Good omega,” one says. 

“So hot for us, he loves it,” says another.

”Just made to take cock.”

”And a lot of it!”

Coins slip through his fingers, rolling onto the mattress. Dollar bills flutter to the floor. Whenever a cock slides free of his mouth, come and drool dribble over the money. Everything in the room smells like sex, sweat, and dirty change.

All the while, Pierce fingers his ass, slowly twisting and easing and coaxing him into orgasm after orgasm. Each time he comes, he cries. Tears soaking his face and streaking tracks in the come. And this, too they mock.

”Finally getting what you need, huh?”

”Or are you already crying for more?”

—-

When everyone is eventually sated, Pierce lifts the saint’s medal to his lips to force him to kiss it. He does and Pierce presses a rolled dollar bill between his knuckles. 

“Say ‘thank you,’ omega.”

“Thank you,” he mumbles hoarsely, cheek smashed against a crumpled ten dollar bill. The ten dollars was from the alpha who wanted to come over his face. Under it is a dollar to come on the tip of his tongue. A quarter for him to hold his mouth open. A dime from the beta who wanted him to smile for them. 

He isn’t smiling now.

No one paid him for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- back in an induced heat, Bucky receives Pierce  
> \- Pierce knots his mouth, dislocating his jaw. Bucky passes out.  
> \- there is a bitter sweet dream sequence  
> \- when Bucky revives, he's gangbanged and it's awful


End file.
